So I am going to start this posting with my successes and then explain how I screwed up (nice way to say it) and fixed things back to working order. Below are a few videos with the Lykamobile under steam. The first video is of the engine without the chain drive hooked up. The engine is running in reverse which according to Steam Traction World actually runs better in reverse due to the nature of the Modified Hackworth Valving System.
This next video shows the engine in forward. Its a bit rougher, which later I can say I have re-timed and it runs much better. I will cover that in a separate posting.
Next video is the Lykamobile backing out of my garage for its first driven motion - quite an accomplishment after 3 or so years!!
(by the way the fellow sitting next to me is my brother from another mother - we have been friends since High School and both our families have grown up together - now including grandkids!)
Next we venture down the street for the first time. We did have to drive it back in reverse because of timing issues that I have now corrected with the help of Ian and Dean from Steam Traction World.
So that was the happy stuff, now for the scary stuff. On my first steaming of the boiler I made a very bad mistake and almost cost me a new boiler. I was anxious to try everything out - and not thinking through things and being very unfamiliar with steam, I screwed up. I'm a mechanical engineer and my expertise is machine design, not process power - I dealt with gear trains, belts, rollers, chains, pneumatic and vacuum systems, dust collectors, material flows etc. But Dean and his crew at Steam Traction World came through and reassured me that I could "probably" fix things if the screw up wasn't too bad. So what happen? I ran the boiler dry and cooked my boiler for about two minutes before I realized I was was not getting steam or pressure. Those two minutes ruined all the boiler tubes' mechanical seals to the boiler plates. My boiler would no longer hold pressure and depending on just how hot the tubes got would depend on just how bad off I would be. Luckily the tubes were not warped or twisted and just the ends had become loose. Below is a picture of the top of the boiler where I used soapy water to see why my boiler was not holding pressure. The boiler is still on the Lykamobile frame in this picture.
So this happened on Friday the 13th of November - in retrospect, I should not have been doing anything on such a bad luck day. I sent this image off to Dean telling him I screwed up. Amazingly Dean responded back to my email in short order even though it was 9:40 pm his local time and reassured me that we can work this out and fix it. So in the meantime I disassembled everything and pulled the boiler out for a closer inspection.
Saturday November 14th Dean went into their shop and found the mandrel that they use to swage and seal all the tubes and sent me information on where they purchased this tool. I contacted the company (Wicksteed Engineering Ltd) on November 16 and purchased the mandrel November 17. It is an E23-24 mandrel and costs £33.00 Sterling plus £33.50 shipping via DHL. I received the mandrel in two days. So the plan was for me to use a 2.5 pound hammer and re-seat all of the tubes. The tubes are copper with a steel endcap inserted to help protect the ends of the copper tubes. I plugged all the pipe fittings and hooked up my compressor to pressurize the boiler. At first my compressor ran all of the time, but gradually as I progressed the boiler leaked less and less. There are 282 tubes. I used WD40 for my fluid to spray on the tubes to see any leaks. Below are a few pictures detailing how it went.
The process was to oil the mandrel, place it in the tube, tap the mandrel with the big hammer about 6 to 10 times. I let the hammer do the work and was not really wacking it, but letting it drop with a little forward motion. You then twist or rotate the mandrel to let it release - I eventually used a battery powered impact drill motor with a socket that you place on the square portion of the mandrel and spin the mandrel loose with the aid of the oil on the mandrel. Its important to keep the mandrel oiled up so that the mandrel does not get stuck. You have to take care to not over expand the tubes which would weaken them. Below is shown small bubbles in the WD40 that I eventually sealed under 150 PSI pressure.
After all is sealed it was time to put it all back together. This time I decided to use a different pipe sealant that I saw being used by a previous Lykamobile Series 1 builder. It is called X-PANDO. This sealant is a powder that you mix with water and coat the threads with. As it dries it expands and sets the threads and seals. I liked it much better for the threads than the Steam Seal. I can say I don't have any leaks where I used this product so far.
I have more bits to go over in regards to my Trials and Tribulations, but they are "normal" as compared to the above. I will cover them in a following post soon.
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